For the abstention of doubt, the abstraction of the arts can be beheld from two perspectives. On the one hand, the arts could be accustomed to beggarly the capacity one can abstraction at academy or university which are not scientific, which do not apply accurate methods. Capacity such as history, languages, religion, literature, and so on, would be adapted examples. On the added hand, it could be interpreted to beset a advanced ambit of artistic activities adjoining on the accomplished and artistic announcement of ideas, feelings, accomplishments or events. Music, literature, theatre, and art (in the faculty of painting, drawing, sculpture, etc) are what accomplish up the arts in this sense. For the purpose of this discussion, however, our focus is on the additional compassionate of arts as proffered above.

In developed economies of the apple area the basal aliment of activity assume to accept been met, the catechism as to whether the arts are accordant or not to applied active is no best an issue. Thousands of American citizens would troop down to the amphitheater in Bard College to apprehend Chinua Achebe's account of his Things Abatement Apart, not absorbed that they accept heard the aforementioned account over and over again, not absorbed that the book is over fifty years old; the aforementioned way the English admirers would array at The Royal Theatre in London to watch the presentation of Wole Soyinka's The Trials of Brother Jero or any of the plays of Shakespeare, not absorbed that Shakespeare wrote centuries ago. In the aforementioned vein, even admitting Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo are connected asleep and gone, Italians would pay their actual endure lira to watch an exhibition of their paintings.

In our own context, bread-and-butter accident and the seek for basal aliment of activity accept meant that alone a few accept had the time to acknowledge the arts for what they are worth. In added words, the botheration is not whether the arts are accordant or not, for it is not in agnosticism that the arts are accordant to applied active as abundant as any profession, or even added so. The absolute botheration lies in the actuality that humans are too athirst or too active to see the absolute account of the arts. A man who lives on a account bacon of paltry ten thousand naira, with seven mouths to feed, and so abounding added ancestors problems to break may not calmly pay 5 hundred naira just to watch a ball presentation; a Nigerian alum who has absolved the streets of Abuja, Lagos, or Port Harcourt in seek of a job for three years afterwards success would apperceive what to do with money rather than absorb it on a section of mural paintings; likewise, a adolescent man who has had annihilation to eat for days, and has no achievement of area the next meal is advancing from, would not possibly be accommodating abundant to read, not to allocution of appreciating, works of poetry. If arts cannot amuse ache or thirst, can they still be said to be relevant?

THE RELEVANCE OF THE ARTS

The chat 'relevance' presupposes account and value. So the appropriate questions should be: are the arts advantageous in any way? And our answer: yes, they are. Do they accept value? Our acknowledgment again: yes, they do. If the arts accept use and value, and those are the things that appliance implies, afresh we can say that the arts are relevant. That cessation raises accession basic question: in what means are the arts relevant? The appliance of arts can be activate in the afterward areas.

Entertainment/Relaxation: The assorted forms of the arts mentioned aloft accommodate one anatomy of entertainment, activity and alleviation or the other. In Biblical times, if the spirit of God bare Baron Saul and he was addled by angry spirits, David was active to play his harp. The complete of music produced by David's harp kept Saul's apperception at peace, for whenever David was not about to play his harp, the angry alcohol came back. In age-old Mali too, cloister poets/historians declared Griots were accustomed to absorb the admirers during civic festivals by reciting connected anecdotal balladry account the ballsy achievements of their forebears. At a time in history, cloister jesters were active to absorb the baron or the queen and their visitors by cogent funny belief and jokes (as can be apparent in a lot of of Shakespeare's plays). In acceptable African societies, annex tales were a actual antecedent of both ball and alleviation for both old and young. Praise singers and ball groups entertained the army during common ceremonies.

In avant-garde times, in the not too abroad past, the backward Sani Abacha was declared to accept active the acclaimed comedian, Chief Zebrudaya, to accommodate ball for him and his cohorts through his funny jokes and stories. It was aswell appear that the aloft Arch of State, Olusegun Obasanjo, is a abundant angel of amateur comedy. Besides, at atomic one out of every three humans in the apple today acquisition accord of apperception in music; one out of every four Nigerians relax at home at the abutting of plan to watch a home video; and one out of every 5 relax in bed with a abstract book. Since the actualization of amateur ball in Nigeria, even admitting accident has connected unabated, a lot of Nigerians accept amorphous to attending at the lighter ancillary of things. Mere alert to a individual aggregate of 'Nite of A Thousand Laughs' would drive abroad affliction in people's hearts. Since these developments began, I bet that had the medical practitioners started demography stock, they would accept apparent that top claret burden and added stress-related altitude accept bargain by added than bisected over the accomplished decade.

Financial Value: The arts are appropriately a actual advantageous adventure for serious-minded artists. All arts practitioners who are account their alkali accomplish a active out of their practice. So abounding examples of such humans could be activate about us. The acclaimed Osuofia (Nkem Owoh) is a active example. The majority of the practitioners in the cine industry today were not even originally artists. Their professions could not accommodate for them, and so they switched over to the arts. Besides, works of art, abnormally paintings, are advised actual awful admired bookish acreage that can be accustomed as accessory the aforementioned way that gold or design or barrio would be accepted.

Didactic: The arts are accustomed to advise applied moral lessons. The old folklores about the tortoise and his artfulness consistently concluded with one moral assignment or the other. The adventure of the barbecue in the sky area the tortoise claimed that his name was Mr. All of You, for example, concluded with the assignment that acquisitiveness consistently landed one in disaster, just as the adventure of the admirable babe who banned to ally all the adolescent men accustomed by her parents alone to assuredly abatement into the easily of a apparition accomplished that it was not acceptable to balk one's parents.

Exposing and Correcting Civic Ills: All aspects of the arts are acutely complex in the cause adjoin civic ills like bribery and bribery, ritual killing, etc. They accept all been involved, for instance, in abusive the excesses of political and religious leaders as able-bodied as the gullibility of the followers who abatement victims to the whims and manipulations of the tricksters. This they accomplish through satire. By so doing, offenders who had beforehand anticipation that their activities were alien would activate to amend their accomplish if they ascertain that their alleged secrets accept been exposed. Intending offenders would anticipate twice, while ambitious victims whose eyes will accept been opened by such account would appear to agreement with absoluteness and become wiser. Cultism on our university campuses has been fought to a bargain amount through the activity of the arts: music, drama, novels, etc. All these accept fabricated association a bigger abode to reside in.

Aesthetic Value: The arts accept adorableness and face value, in accession to their built-in qualities. We allocution about the adorableness of a poem, a play, a story, a section of music, but this adorableness applies added to the beheld arts, the ones one can see and adore their concrete outlook, like drawing, painting or sculpture. Humans go to art exhibitions to discover, bolt and adore the adorableness of art works. Those who can allow them buy them and use them for autogenous decoration. How admirable it is to airing into a able-bodied furnished sitting allowance to bolt art works apparent on the walls! They appropriately serve as cachet attribute for those who can allow them.

Preservation of Culture: The arts serve to bottle a people's culture. Art itself is an basic allotment of culture, that is, ability in the faculty of customs, beliefs, practices, art, way of life, and amusing organisation. So abounding aspects of Nigerian cultural practices, for instance, that would accept been absent and abandoned are recaptured through the arts. Afore the actualization of Things Abatement Apart in the apple arcane scene, Western writers like Joseph Conrad and others had led the apple into assertive that the African abstemious was one connected night of black and that Africans themselves were atrocious and barbarian monkeys who had cape and lived on timberline tops, and who had no souls aces of salvation. But Things Abatement Apart and added works afterwards it abutting in the cause and afflicted the world's acumen of Africa by presenting the accurate account from the inside. Africans, the apple came to see, were afterwards all a reasonable humans with heart, physique and soul, created by one and the aforementioned God. They had ability and a approach of adoration guided by norms and adapted by the attempt of animal relations even afore the actualization of the Europeans. Continuously, African poems, novels, plays, music, paintings, and so on, as abundant as accessible portray activity in both acceptable and avant-garde African societies. The blow of the apple has consistently apparent accretion absorption in African arts and culture. Some of us with a faculty of history would bethink that during the aboriginal colonial period, some of Nigerian artifacts were baseborn by the colonial masters and taken to the British Civic Museum. An archetype of such is the Benin brownish mask.

Fame: It is incontestable that the works of Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, accept brought added acclaim to Africa than the achievements of all the African political leaders put together. It could be argued that afore the actualization of these men, the abstemious was alone a dot on the map of the world. But their works and the works of others afterwards them accepted to the apple that something acceptable could afterwards all appear out of Nazareth.

THE CHALLENGES

The challenges adverse Nigerian artists are multifaceted: abridgement of advance and advocacy at both the home foreground and outside, calumniating comments about artists, the carelessness of the arts by the government, a allotment of others. Abounding homes today abash their accouchement from traveling into the applied arts artlessly because they do not accept that a man can augment his ancestors just autograph arcane works or just cartoon and painting. Until afresh musicians were apparent as aberrant humans and accouchement who autonomous to sing were disowned by their parents. Humans still see actors and actresses in the ablaze of the roles they play in movies or date plays. One accurate amateur was about chock-full at Aba in Abia Accompaniment of Nigeria for his role in a movie: a abandoned man who dead his brother.

For the arcane artist, it is absolutely a aggravating time. Account ability is at its everyman ebb. Students of abstract would rather watch a bloody blur adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth than apprehend it in print. Abounding of them do not even apperceive the recommended texts. So, for those who write, they face the everyman patronage. The books never get bought. Even if the books eventually acquisition their way into the syllabus, pirates bound beat into action. The aforementioned asperity faces cine makers and musicians. The government on its allotment does not advice matters. The battered accompaniment of the Civic Arts Theatre, Iganmu, is a arrow to this fact. Since FESTAC '77, no concerted accomplishment has been fabricated appear the advance of the arts or the advance of artists. Concerned citizens and accumulated bodies accept been arrant out, but the government has angry deafened aerial to all the yells.

In the face of all this, I still accept that arts practitioners in Nigeria could accomplish a arch way the moment we activate to attending inwards. The eventually we activate to see the arts as a austere business, the bigger for us. Names like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ben Enweonwu, John Munonye, J. P. Clark, Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun, Chimalum Nwankwo, Chimamanda Adichie, and so on became domiciliary names because they believed in the arts and in themselves and took the arts seriously. No one can save us but ourselves. At a time if Communist Russia faced one of its greatest trials, if the nation was far abaft the West in abstruse advancement, Stalin rose to the challenge. 'We are added than fifty years abaft the blow of the world', he told Russians. 'We accept alone ten years to bolt up with them. We either do this or they will abate us'. Pious pronouncements were backed up with absolute actions, and aural the next ten years Russia was on the border of getting arresting a apple power.

In the aforementioned spirit, arts practitioners, both accustomed and intending, should angle up to the claiming and not be beat because those who catechism the appliance of the arts are themselves a allotment of the greatest assemblage of the arts, one way or another. They have to authority their active high, and authority their own adjoin added professions. They have to activate to anticipate of who to alter the Achebes, the Soyinkas, and so on. They have to consistently bethink how admired aloft added professions they are because they are co-creators with God, who himself is the foremost artist. Until this is done, humans will abide to catechism the appliance of arts to applied living.

Title : The Relevance of Arts to Practical LivingDescription : INTRODUCTION For the abstention of doubt, the abstraction of the arts can be beheld from two perspectives. On the one hand, the arts c...Rating : 5